"Jefers-pelters! still eatin'?" he cackled. "All the fambly here? Where's your gal, Marty?"
"Haven't got none," declared the boy with a scowl as positive as his double negative.
"What?" exploded Walky in apparent surprise. "Then I be needin' spectacles, jest as my ol' woman says. I thought I seen you hangin' around Hope Drugg's store more'n a little lately; and I vum I thought 'twas you 't sat beside little Lottie at the Ladies' Aid supper t'other night an' treated her to ice-cream till the child liketer bust—er—haw! haw! haw!"
"Aw, you don't need glasses, Walky. What you need is blinders," growled Marty with some impatience.
"Ya-as; I've been tol' that before," said the incorrigible joker. "Folks don't take kindly to the idee of my havin' sech sharp eyes, neither. I undertook to tell you a thing or two, Jase, some time ago 'bout that Tom Hotchkiss; but ye wouldn't see it with my eyes."
"If I seen everything and everybody in the town the way you seen it, Walky, I'd get as twisted as a dumbed sas'fras root," snarled Uncle Jason.
"Ye wouldn't ha' been so twisted about Tom," Walky said placidly. He was as thick-skinned as a walrus and the cut direct did not in the least trouble him.
"I tell ye, I 'member what that feller was when he was a boy," he pursued. "Bad blood, there—bad blood."
"By mighty!" ejaculated Uncle Jason. "Cale Hotchkiss was as square a feller as ever walked on sole-leather. I'm glad he's dead. If he'd lived to see his son turn out so bad——"
"'Twarn't Caleb Hotchkiss' blood I was referrin' to," Walky struck in. "Caleb merried one o' them Pickberry gals over to Bowling. An' you know well enough what them Pickberrys was. As for this here Tom, he was as sly as a skunk-bear when he was a boy."